Scalability issues in the Internet routing system

Wed Oct 19 11:28:01 UTC 2005

On Wed, 19 Oct 2005, Andre Oppermann wrote:

> the rationale behind MPLS.  However here we need something that 
> administratively and politically works inter-AS like prefix+BGP 
> today.  Maybe the new 32bit AS number may serve as such a perfect 
> match routing identifier.

Interesting idea.

> That'd make up to 4 billion possible entries in the DFZ routing 
> system.  Or about 16k at todays size of the DFZ.  One AS == one 
> routing policy.

That means though that we still need a way for people without an ASN 
to multi-home. Because clearly the number of ASNs is quite restricted 
compared to the number of IPv6 prefixes. So:

- we need to change that 4-byte AS draft to (4+X)-byte ASNs
   sharpish, X should be 4 probably (good luck with that). And change
   all IPv6 stacks in routers (and hosts, but that's easier).

OR

- we also need $AREA allocated IPs (which obviously operators would
   love to work on implementing)

OR

- we still will have some end-host "probe with every source address"
   and "change every stack" solution, one which adds a sort of
   supra-net to the internet which is only visible to end-hosts with
   this stack.

Seems to me at least, pre-coffee.

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
ether leak